Why Do Conservative Think Bosses Are Only In Unions?

March 11, 2011

The state is home to a great many employees of the federal government, many of whom belong to public-sector unions that do not enjoy the extortionate powers until now invested in Wisconsin’s union bosses. ...

And they all will receive something of value: a regularly scheduled vote about whether to be represented by their unions, which often serve no one’s interests but those of the union bosses themselves. ...

The union bosses and their Democratic patrons know that giving workers more of a choice about union representation will diminish that power and reduce that cash flow.

The substantive argument of the editorial is transparently self-refuting, arguing in one breath that Scott Walker's anti-union law will save the state money -- by reducing workers' ability to bargain for more generous wages and benefits -- and then immediately proclaiming that unions do nothing for the workers. That's standard issue right-wing agitprop on unions -- they're both a massive extortion play that forces employers to dole out unaffordably large benefits, and an organization that does nothing for its members, depending on who the argument is targeting at any given moment.

But put aside the argument. I'd like any honest conservative -- and I know a couple can be found at NR -- to address a linguistic point. It's standard procedure among conservatives to refer to unions as "union bosses." It's a propagandistic tradition designed to pound home the message to workers that union leaders don't represent them. Conservatives use the phrase "bosses" to describe unions, yet they very rarely use the phrase to describe business.

Of course, unionized workers can elect their unions "bosses," but they cannot elect their, well, real bosses. That's why the term "boss" in the normal English usage, as opposed to in right-wing agitprop, refers to a work supervisor rather than a union leader. I suppose I could see that one could subscribe to a radical critique of the labor election system which deems union leaders just as much a boss as a real boss. That's the case for using "boss" to describe both sides. But what could possibly justify using the term to describe labor but not to describe business? Is there any justification for this habit other than the demands of propaganda?